World of Warcraft post-BC discussion

[mattag08]

For background's sake, I played World of Warcraft throughout most of the "vanilla" years. I started playing from a couple months after launch and played off and on until The Burning Crusade was released. I had a number of issues with decisions Blizzard made for the expansion and so I stopped playing and never looked back.

However, I've always been interested in the social and psychological effects of the game. This comes a couple years late, but I have a renewed interest in this subject since I began seeing some old friends again who play World of Warcraft regularly. Invariably our conversations will turn to WoW and we'll discuss the game. I'll provide my personal opinions of what I think Blizzard did wrong and my friends will defend the game while still conceding many of my points as accurate.

I'm a big fan of independent film critics/directors like http://www.redlettermedia.com
and I thought, "Would it be possible for me to write an essay or make a short film explaining exactly what happened with Blizzard's development choices and how they ruined an otherwise enjoyable game?"

This question sparked a few others that I wanted to pose to the group:
1) Is there any such writing or video already out there (besides shitty Youtube videos from people with a vendetta)? I haven't found one, but a couple hours Google searching doesn't make me confident that something doesn't exist.

2) Has anyone else had a similar experience (quitting WoW and debating the games selling points with friends)?

3) Does anyone else feel strongly that the "vanilla" version of World of Warcraft offered a better gaming experience than the current content (this would be especially interesting to hear from people that have played the expansions)?

 

[FranticGorilla]

As that particular brand of WoW addict that plays WoW while complaining about all of it's flaws, what exactly were the problems inherent with Burning Crusade that made you quit?

I have my own reasons for why I think that World of Warcraft Vanilla was much better than it's later iterations, for the game it was trying to be. But many of the problems that drove people away I would say are actually generally inherent to the game in general, regardless of expansions.

 

[mattag08]

A lot of it revolves around making an already easy game incredibly easy. Other stuff included the way that Blizzard decided to invalidate thousands of man-hours of hard work by making epic lvl-60 gear worthless post-BC.

 

[Dyme]

I played Vanilla WoW and had the most fun during that time.
I quit after playing BC for two months. And hated BC.
Started again with WotLK. WoW was quite fun again. Played a few months, didn't get the "addicted-feeling" that made Vanilla so much fun. Quit after a few months.
Started again with Cataclysm. I enjoy it.

The game itself has become much better. But my attitude got "worse".

In Vanilla I was what some people might call addicted. I had many people I liked chatting and playing with. Farming items, reputation etc. didn't feel as retarded as it is.

Today raiding/pvp is the only challenge in WoW. There are ~no group quests or difficulties in leveling. 5-man dungeons also were quite hard (until I got my EPICSX).
Leveling today is guided. You walk your route of quests, you got an arrow and marks on your map where you have to go.
But to be honest, leveling in Classic was not more difficult, it was more annoying. Big parts were travelling. Every "difficult" quests was looked up at thottbot or some other site. And you basically had to know every quest before you could start leveling efficiently.
Leveling was and is boring. Therefore it is good that leveling is faster now.
The dungeonfinder-tool is really good. Etc.

But WoW has lost its magic, because I am not a child anymore. If you think analytically instead of "diving into the World of Warcraft" WoW is much less fun. But raiding basically still is the same. And it is nice. I always liked Co-op.

 

[mattag08]

While leveling is always a pain, I never found it boring until the second or even third character that I leveled up. The sense of exploration and newness was very profound and one of the things I enjoyed most about the game. Even though the last 20 levels were much more difficult than the first 40 I found that challenge to be something that was not too difficult (I could usually gain a level every day or two), but also challenging enough to make it feel rewarding. It had just the right balance in my opinion. Make players feel like they've accomplished something significant with each play session, but don't reward them too much and make it too easy because then the experience becomes shallow.

 

[Senaro]

Up until the end of Wrath, I've always thoroughly enjoyed my Warcraft experiences, but that's because it would take me months to finally reach the level cap. I spent most of my time exploring and doing things with friends. It wasn't until I started actually raiding Kara near the end of BC that I started to not have fun anymore. Wrath fixed that problem for me, until the last few months when I decided to try going into the raids.

For me, WoW is fun as long as I'm not at the level cap. I have the best times levelling up with my friends rather than running theorycrafting on raid bosses. The rewards at max level aren't worth the excessive time and effort it takes to get them, especially when they'll be made obsolete when the next new raid gets released a few months down the line.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Other stuff included the way that Blizzard decided to invalidate thousands of man-hours of hard work by making epic lvl-60 gear worthless post-BC.

This point came up a lot in BC, and I can't say I follow it. Are you saying you want your L60 epic gear to last you forever? As someone who was in pretty much the best possible gear as Burning Crusade launched, I found it exciting to be replacing gear. Most of my enjoyment in RPGs comes from min/maxing my gear and hunting for upgrades. I think having gear last forever would kill the game for me and a lot of my friends.

 

[mattag08]

Other stuff included the way that Blizzard decided to invalidate thousands of man-hours of hard work by making epic lvl-60 gear worthless post-BC.

This point came up a lot in BC, and I can't say I follow it. Are you saying you want your L60 epic gear to last you forever? As someone who was in pretty much the best possible gear as Burning Crusade launched, I found it exciting to be replacing gear. Most of my enjoyment in RPGs comes from min/maxing my gear and hunting for upgrades. I think having gear last forever would kill the game for me and a lot of my friends.

It would've been easier just to create more content at the same level and have even more tiers of armor. Everything they added could've been implemented without a level cap increase. People like Senaro are the only people who enjoyed the increased level cap. Everyone else just quested to the new CAP and went back to the raid/endgame/armor-set-collecting content.

 

[Rednog]

A big problem with forming a critique about something like a game is that you actually have to play and experience it. With something like red letter media it works because the reviewer is knowledgeable on both the movies and the way movies work and are made.
So I really don't think you can really dive into a review with only vanilla under your belt.
Also, I honestly think BC was the best of the expansions (I don't know about cataclysm since I quit 5 months prior to its release). The dungeons and bosses were actually hard and you got to fight through several iconic bosses and team up with the heroes of the alliance/horde.
Whereas Wrath became a clusterf*ck of new talent trees, some complete revamps of classes, and the unholy plague of deathknights and them being absurdly overpowered for months. Naxx was a snore fest. Uld was hard in the beginning with all the bugs but most decent players cleared it out after a month or two. Trials was a joke. And with the ever increasing buff in icecrown arthas was downed by pugs. And heroics were no longer heroics.

 

[Ladette]

Massive post incomming, /deepbreath. I started in Vanilla and raided hardcore. To be honest, I didn't terribly enjoy it. I played because it killed time and I liked the people I was playing with.

I'll come right out and say that the only thing that I feel Vanilla and BC had better than Wrath and Cataclysm was the community. It was a much friendlier atmosphere, people didn't know how anything worked. There was a lot of guess work over what was and wasn't good. You still had elitest assholes and complete idiots, but there just didn't seem to be as many. From a gameplay perspective, WoW really sucked back then. Half the specs were utterly useless and if you didn't raid you didn't do anything at endgame. You could try to PvP, but as soon as a Warrior in full raid gear showed up you died, simply put you couldn't kill them but they sure as hell could kill you. And while some of the raids were cool, a lot of the difficulty came from broken mechanics and gear checks. You had to drag people through all the old raids to get them geared so that you could do the current raids. You also didn't have all the sites like elitestjerks and wowhead to tell you how to do things. You learned a boss by wiping endlessly on it until you got it down. While it fun to raid with people you liked, it did get a bit grating after awhile. And if you showed up late to the game there was no way you were raiding endgame unless you knew people.

Burning Crusade improved pretty much everything across the board, but once again you had to run new raiders through all the old content that you'd raided 1,000 times before to get them attuned for the current tier of raiding. PvP finally began to get something resembeling balance, but with the advent of crowd control many specs were useless in PvE. You could not run Magisters Terrace without at least two mages, "sorry ret paladin, we don't need you." I was still running with my guild though, and I liked the people I was raiding with. We had fun as a group, and that kept me playing. Then a lot them quit and I found I wasn't having as much fun anymore, so I quit. And like Vanilla, if you came into the expansion late it took you forever to raid endgame.

Then I ran into one of my old guild members at BestBuy and he said I should come back to the game, Wrath of the Lich King fixed a lot of my old hates. Even better, I didn't need to get dragged through every previous raid tier, and thus didn't subject my guild to mindnumbing bordom. So I came back with my new guild and got back into WoW, and for the first time I was enjoying the game even when I wasn't playing with guild mates. I could run dungeons without spamming trade for an hour. I could get to the current tier raiding if I ran random dungeons for a week. Best of all, I could raid as almost any spec I wanted, I could choose what I enjoyed, you didn't absolutely need what was most optimal.

I never had the sense that WoW was anything but a fun game to play with people you liked, it never was this magical thing for me. Maybe that's why I enjoy it still. I can see why people might no longer enjoy the game though. The community is pretty bad, not XboxLive bad, but bad none the less. You can also hit the endgame much quicker, and if you aren't playing with people you at least have a passing intrest in then it can get dull rather quick.

Sorry for the massive post, I got a little excited there. I don't recomend direct quoting.

 

[Wondermint13]

A lot of it revolves around making an already easy game incredibly easy. Other stuff included the way that Blizzard decided to invalidate thousands of man-hours of hard work by making epic lvl-60 gear worthless post-BC.

Thats the point I make alot. Yes yes... Its all about getting better gear and yay you have the big high numbers for a while after spending god-knows how many hours doing the same f***ing raids 5 times a week. Well done you.

Just to be spat on in the face and told 'HAH! Not good enough sucker! Go do it all again! Mwuahahahah!' So much for loyalty there eh you poor addicted plonker!

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Other stuff included the way that Blizzard decided to invalidate thousands of man-hours of hard work by making epic lvl-60 gear worthless post-BC.

This point came up a lot in BC, and I can't say I follow it. Are you saying you want your L60 epic gear to last you forever? As someone who was in pretty much the best possible gear as Burning Crusade launched, I found it exciting to be replacing gear. Most of my enjoyment in RPGs comes from min/maxing my gear and hunting for upgrades. I think having gear last forever would kill the game for me and a lot of my friends.

It would've been easier just to create more content at the same level and have even more tiers of armor. Everything they added could've been implemented without a level cap increase. People like Senaro are the only people who enjoyed the increased level cap. Everyone else just quested to the new CAP and went back to the raid/endgame/armor-set-collecting content.

With the way combat ratings work, you can't just keep adding more stats to gear at the same level forever. Eventually we'd have 120% crit, 300% haste etc. The system is built to have a ceiling on ratings, otherwise is gets all out of whack as it did at the end of Wrath. I had a Feral Druid with over 70% crit raid buffed. That's kinda whacky.

 

[Wolfram23]

I actually thought BC was a good step forward. It muddled things a little (gearing I mean) with arenas and I think they also started screwing with balancing a little too much due to the PVP, which caused some issues in PVE, but on the whole I thought it was great. I didn't like where the game went with WotLK tho. Heroics no longer needing keys, blues having little value, and purples being so common that they need several ranks/tiers of them. Really easy and farmable content... I did like what they did with crafting tho.

Anyway I haven't played for like 2 years now, since not long after Ulduar came out. But I played until that point since release, minus a few months off here and there.

 

[GotMalkAvian]

For me, WoW lost all appeal when I hit endgame. I spent the last few months of vanilla grinding money waiting for BC to come out, took my time through BC and spent most of that endgame on a hiatus, then came back for Wrath and lost interest. Essentially, I enjoyed the game while I was actively leveling up my characters, exploring new areas, and genuinely progressing. I ran into problems when "progress" came to mean "running the same dungeon night after night in the hopes of getting a .3% drop rate pair of gloves so that I can run another dungeon over and over for another piece of extremely rare yet only marginally better gear." That sort of thing just wasn't fun for me, so I quit.

I still have friends that are heavily into raiding, and seem to enjoy the repetition of rerunning raids to get tactics down to a science. Actually, I was watching a buddy play recently, and it looks like they've made a lot of decent improvements with Cataclysm; it's still a very different game, but it looks like they've made 1-60 fun again.